The ballads came, in time, to have certain tricks of style, such as are apt to characterize a body of anonymous folk-poetry. Such is their use of conventional epithets; "the red, red gold," "the good green wood," "the gray goose wing." Such are certain recurring terms of phrase like, But out and spak their stepmother. Such is, finally, a kind of sing-song repetition, which doubtless helped the ballad singer to memorize his stock, as, for example, She had'na pu'd a double rose, A rose but only twae. Or again, And mony ane sings o' grass, o' grass, And mony ane sings o' corn; An mony ane sings o' Robin Hood, Kens little whare he was born. It was na in the ha', the ha', Nor in the painted bower; But it was in the gude green wood, Amang the lily flower. Copies of some of these old ballads were hawked about in the 16th century, printed in black letter, "broadsides," or single sheets. Wynkyn de Worde printed in 1489 _A Lytell Geste of Robin Hood_, which is a sort of digest of earlier ballads on the subject. In the 17th century a few of the English popular ballads were collected in miscellanies called _Garlands_. Early in the 18th century the Scotch poet, Allan Ramsay, published a number of Scotch ballads in the _Evergreen_ and _Tea-Table Miscellany_. But no large and important collection was put forth until Percy's _Reliques_ (1765), a book which had a powerful influence upon Wordsworth and Walter Scott. In Scotland some excellent ballads in the ancient manner were written in the 18th century, such as Jane Elliott's _Lament for Flodden_, and the fine ballad of _Sir Patrick Spence_. Walter Scott's _Proud Maisie is in the Wood_, is a perfect reproduction of the pregnant, indirect method of the old ballad makers.